Philippine Airlines Hopes To Restart China Flights Soon

Philippine Airlines, the country's flag carrier, hopes to resume its commercial operations to China as soon as China eases its strict entry and exit policies for COVID-19 control.

According to a report from Philippine Star, a Philippine new agency, the spokesperson of Philippine Airlines, Cielo Villaluna, said,

"Our regular commercial services to cities in mainland China have yet to be restored because of applicable travel restrictions in relation to the Chinese zero-COVID policy. But we look forward to flying once the mainland is opened to commercial air traffic,"

Villaluna also mentioned that currently Philippine Airlines could only fly chartered flights to Tianjin.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Philippine Airlines used to fly up to 35 flights to various destinations in China weekly. However, the carrier canceled its usual routes to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Jinjiang, and Xiamen under strict restrictions resulting from China's zero-COVID policy.

A350-900 Philippine Airlines Taking Off — Photo: Airbus

The impact of the loss of Chinese visitors

With minimal Chinese leisure visitors after the outbreak in early 2020, the Philippines lost almost one-fifth of its tourists. There were 1.74 million Chinese visitors to the Philippines in 2019, making up 21% of that year's record 8.26 million arrivals.

The financial impact followed. Philippines Department of Tourism reported that Chinese visitors splurged 2.33 billion US dollars during their stay in 2019, a number almost double the 1.21 billion US dollars spent by US tourists.

Philippine Airlines is the flag carrier and biggest airline in the country, likely having hundreds of thousands of members on its FF program. Photo: Getty Images

However, in the perspective of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), compared with other parts of the world, China showed a slow and limited recovery regarding easing the control on travel, which is bad news for airlines of Asia and the world trying to get Chinese travelers back to their countries again.

IATA states,

"Lingering travel restrictions, notably in China, have limited recovery in international connectivity in Asia Pacific to a mere 29 percent of the 2019 levels, lagging significantly behind the recovery seen in all other regions, with North America at 72 percent of its pre-pandemic service and Latin America and Africa at over 90 percent on the same basis,"

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China's gradual change of policy

Last week, Simple Flying reported that Beijing is welcoming back scheduled international commercial flights for the first time in over two years.

The Chinese government redirected commercial flights in and out of its capital Beijing to various domestic destinations to mitigate the risk of letting the COVID-19 cases directly into the capital city.

On the day of this report (August 7th, 2022), the Chinese civil aviation regulator, CAAC, announced the ease of its circuit-breaker policy for international flights for the first time since June 2020.

Previous policy:

Five	confirmed positive cases on any international flight, the route will be suspended for	one week;
Ten		four weeks.

Latest policy:

If the confirmed positive case on any international flight is more than FIVE and the number of positive cases is more than	4%	of the total passengers onboard, the route will be suspended for	one week;
	8%		two weeks.